The Next American City
City Journal Audio
Manhattan Institute
4.7 • 657 Ratings
🗓️ 3 October 2018
⏱️ 24 minutes
🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS
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Summary
Mick Cornett joins Aaron Renn to discuss Cornett's time as mayor of Oklahoma City (2004-2018) and his new book The Next American City: The Big Promise of Our Midsize Metros.
America is full of midsize cities that have prospered through smart governance, including Charleston, Des Moines, Indianapolis, Sacramento—and Oklahoma City. Over the last decade-plus, elected officials and community leaders have made real progress on improving these urban centers, boosting civic vitality, and creating economic opportunity for residents.
Cornett's four successful terms as mayor of Oklahoma's largest city offer a blueprint for reform-minded mayors across the country. "The Next American City," Aaron Renn writes, "charts Oklahoma City's transformation, offers examples of similar turnarounds in other cities, and describes Cornett's personal journey from sportscaster to mayor."
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome back to the 10 Blocks podcast. This is Paul Beston, managing editor of City Journal. |
| 0:06.1 | Coming up on the show today, we have a fascinating discussion with former Oklahoma City Mayor Mick Cornett, |
| 0:11.2 | who is interviewed by City Journal contributing editor Aaron Wren about his tenure as mayor and his new book, |
| 0:17.3 | The Next American City, The Big promise of our mid-sized metros. |
| 0:22.3 | Cornett served as mayor of Oklahoma City for four terms, from 2004 to 2018, during which |
| 0:28.1 | time he helped turn the city into one of America's up-and-coming places. |
| 0:32.4 | Aaron's interview with Mick Cornett begins after this. We hope you enjoy it. Hello, this is Aaron Wren, contributing editor at City Journal. |
| 0:58.3 | And I'm very excited to be joined today on the podcast by Mick Cornett, who is the former four-term mayor of Oklahoma City. |
| 1:08.1 | And we're here to talk today about his brand new book, The Next American City, |
| 1:13.1 | the Big Promise of our Mid-Sized Metros. Mayor Cornett, thanks for joining me. |
| 1:17.0 | It's good to be with you again, Aaron. |
| 1:18.4 | So we hear a lot today about elite coastal cities, San Francisco, New York, the world is spiky, |
| 1:27.0 | all of that stuff that you hear. You are making a very |
| 1:30.1 | different case. You are saying, actually, not that those other places are bad, but there's |
| 1:34.1 | another group of cities that are also doing very well and really starting to emerge. So tell us |
| 1:40.2 | a little bit about your thesis. On a percentage basis, the growth going forward, population growth, is not going to be in those big East and West Coast cities that we're so accustomed to growth. |
| 1:50.8 | It's going to be in that mid-sized city. |
| 1:53.3 | Now, Oklahoma City is an example, but there are dozens of others. |
| 1:56.9 | Des Moines, Little Rock, Wichita, there's a lot of cities out there that kind of fall into that category. |
| 2:03.3 | And what it appears to be happening is that the millennial generation and the generation behind them |
| 2:08.1 | is starting to look at the quality of life, what they're looking for in a place to live, |
| 2:14.3 | and they're finding these mid-sized cities have a lot to offer, and they don't look |
... |
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